9 Movies That Are Remakes of Remakes

If you’re at the theater this weekend and happen to see the marquee for the Roman epic Ben-Hur, you might think studios are dry on ideas. Of course, some theater-goers might have felt the same way in 1959, when the Charlton Heston-starring Ben-Hur was released: That “original” was a remake of a 1925 silent film, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and both had chariot races that wowed audiences of two different generations. Check out some other well-known films that could be classified as three-makes.

1. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (2006)

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Rather than ask why George Romero’s influential zombie classic has been remade twice, it’s better to wonder why it hasn’t been remade more often. Because the distributor left a copyright symbol off the 1968 original, Romero’s basic premise—the undead chase down a small band of human survivors—can be legally swept up by anyone. Although several independent filmmakers have taken a stab at it, there are only two major theatrical remakes: a 1990 film directed by effects expert Tom Savini, and a 2006 effort titled Night of the Living Dead 3D. While Savini had Romero’s blessing, the most recent version didn't consult with him. It made just $271,000 in theaters.

2. YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998)

In the 1990s, Tom Hanks could do no wrong—and neither could Meg Ryan. After coupling in the 1993 hit Sleepless in Seattle, they re-teamed for You've Got Mail, which was also a hit—as was the movie that inspired it. Producer Julie Durk had caught a television broadcast of 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, which featured Jimmy Stewart sparring with a business rival without realizing they’re exchanging love letters; Warner Bros. updated it to reflect the email era. But Durk wasn’t the first to have the idea for a remake. Nearly 40 years prior, The Shop Around the Corner had been remade as a musical, In the Good Old Summertime, starring Judy Garland. The New York Timescalled Garland’s version “wonderfully rich entertainment,” but later declared Hanks had none of Stewart’s “lanky grace or leading man patina.”

3. HOUSE OF WAX (2005)

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Only Chad Michael Murray completists would remember this disappointing horror film about a wax museum that does a good job of preserving everything inside but the young tourists. The movie was a remake of the 1953 version starring Vincent Price, which is held in much higher regard: Price’s version took some cues from a 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum, but added 3D and a novel three-track audio. Mystery of the Wax Museum was filmed using an early version of Technicolor, which needed lights so powerful that they melted the wax props and even seared some of the actors’ eyes.

4. KISS OF DEATH (1995)

Nicolas Cage turns in one of his typically subtle performances as unhinged gangster Little Junior Brown, leader of a crime ring that entraps reformed criminal Jimmy (David Caruso). The plot was taken from 1947’s Kiss of Death, long hailed a classic by film noir buffs and featuring a classic scene with psychopath Richard Widmark giggling while he pushes an old woman down the stairs. (Trivia note: the stunt person for the woman was Rod Amateau, who later directed 1987’s Garbage Pail Kids movie.) 20th Century Fox remade the film as a Western titled The Fiend Who Walked the West in 1958. It’s notable for being one of the last acting roles of future producer Robert Evans’ career.

5. DOWN TO EARTH (2001)

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Where did co-writers Chris Rock and Louis C.K. get the idea for a comedy about a man who dies young and returns to earth in another body? From Warren Beatty’s 1978 film, Heaven Can Wait, which featured Beatty as a pro quarterback instead of Rock’s comedian character. Where did Beatty get the idea? From Here Comes Mr. Jordan, a 1941 comedy with Robert Montgomery as a boxer who gets a chance at delaying the afterlife. While Beatty likely didn’t solicit advice from Montgomery, Rock said he had lunch with Beatty prior to watching Heaven Can Wait, which he hadn’t yet seen. Beatty, he said, was just “the guy from Dick Tracy.” Both Beatty and Montgomery received Oscar nominations for their performances.

6. THE JAZZ SINGER (1980)

When Neil Diamond decided he wanted to get into the acting business, a remake of 1927’s The Jazz Singer was considered a viable option—even with one dated and offensive element. The original featured Al Jolson as a would-be cantor who goes against his family’s advice to become an entertainer. Notable for being Hollywood’s first synchronized film with dialogue and music on the film strip, it also has scenes of Jolson in blackface, a scene Diamond emulated in his own poorly-reviewed film. Before Diamond, the film was remade with Danny Thomas in 1952; Diamond’s version was only modestly successful in theaters, but the soundtrack sold more than four million copies.

7. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1981)

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Jack Nicholson’s fated affair with Jessica Lange played out once before with Lana Turner and John Garfield in the leading roles. Sandwiched between that 1946 feature and Nicholson’s remake was a lesser-known riff, 1953’s Roadhouse Girl, which was made on the cheap. All three are based on James M. Cain’s pulp novel.

8. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016)

Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke are set to appear in a remake of the 1960 original later this year. But The Magnificent Seven—about a band of gunfighters hired by a town to protect them from pillagers—didn’t begin life as a Western. The film is an American remake of 1954’s Seven Samurai, an Akira Kurosawa epic about a band of samurai in feudal Japan with the same objective. Commenting on the Steve McQueen version, Kurosawa seemed more puzzled than flattered. “The American copy is a disappointment, although entertaining,” he once said. “It is not a version of Seven Samurai. I do not know why they call it that.”

9. THE SQUAW MAN (1931)

Cecil B. DeMille got his start in Hollywood by directing smaller films, including this adaptation of an Edwin Milton Royle stage play about a respected British officer (Warner Baxter) who is blamed for his cousin’s theft of a charity fund. It was previously filmed in 1918 as a silent feature, also directed by DeMille; the director had also made the 1914 original. While the 1931 version took advantage of the "talkie" era, there was another reason he kept returning to the same tale. “I love this story so much that as long as I live I will make it every 10 years," DeMille once said.

It’s believed DeMille is the only director in the history of film to remake his own work on three separate occasions, but he could’ve stopped at one and still made history: The 1914 film is considered Hollywood’s first full-length feature.

1. TONYA AND NANCY.

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In 1994, a little club-and-run thrust the sport of figure skating into the spotlight. The assault on reigning national champion Nancy Kerrigan (and her subsequent anguished cries) at the 1994 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships in Detroit was heard round the world, as were the allegations that her main rival, Tonya Harding, may have been behind it all.

The story goes a little something like this: As America's sweetheart (Kerrigan) is preparing to compete for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team bound for Lillehammer, Norway, she gets clubbed in the knee outside the locker room after practice. Kerrigan is forced to withdraw from competition and Harding gets the gold. Details soon emerge that Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, was behind the attack (he hired a hitman). Harding denies any knowledge or involvement, but tanks at the Olympics the following month. She then pleads guilty to hindering prosecution of Gillooly and his co-conspirators, bodyguard Shawn Eckhart and hitman Shane Stant. And then she's banned from figure skating for life.

Questions about Harding's guilt remain two decades later, and the event is still a topic of conversation today. Recently, both an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary and the Oscar-nominated film I, Tonya revisited the saga, proving we can't get enough of a little figure skating scandal.

2. HAND-PICKED FOR GOLD.

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Usually it's the top three medalists at the U.S. Nationals that compete for America at the Winter Olympics every four years. But in 2014, gold medalist Gracie Gold (no pun intended), silver medalist Polina Edmunds, and ... "pewter" medalist Ashley Wagner were destined for Sochi.

What about the bronze medalist, you ask? Mirai Nagasu, despite out-skating Wagner by a landslide in Boston and despite being the only skater with prior Olympic experience (she placed fourth at Vancouver in 2010) had to watch it all on television. The decision by the country's governing body of figure skating (United States Figure Skating Association, or USFS) deeply divided the skating community as to whether it was the right choice to pass over Nagasu in favor of Wagner, who hadn't skated so great, and it put a global spotlight on the selection process.

In reality, the athletes that we send to the Olympics are not chosen solely on their performance at Nationals—it's one of many criteria taken into consideration, including performance in international competition over the previous year, difficulty of each skater's technical elements, and, to some degree, their marketability to a world audience. This has happened before to other skaters—most notably Michelle Kwan was relegated to being an alternate in 1994 after Nancy Kerrigan was granted a medical bye after the leg-clubbing heard round the world. Nagasu had the right to appeal the decision, and was encouraged to do so by mobs of angry skating fans, but she elected not to.

3. SALT LAKE CITY, 2002.

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Objectively, this scandal rocked the skating world the hardest, because the end result was a shattering of the competitive sport's very structure. When Canadian pairs team Jamie Sale and David Pelletier found themselves in second place after a flawless freeskate at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake, something wasn't right. The Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze placed first, despite a technically flawed performance.

An investigation into the result revealed that judges had conspired to fix the results of the pairs and dance events—a French judge admitted to being pressured to vote for the Russian pair in exchange for a boost for the French dance team (who won that event). In the end, both pairs teams were awarded a gold medal, and the entire system of judging figure skating competition was thrown out and rebuilt.

4. AGENT OF STYLE.

Jackson Haines was an American figure skater in the mid-1800s who had some crazy ideas about the sport. He had this absolutely ludicrous notion of skating to music (music!), waltzing on ice, as well as incorporating balletic movements, athletic jumps, and spins into competition. His brand new style of skating was in complete contrast to the rigid, traditional, and formal (read: awkward) standard of tracing figure-eights into the ice. Needless to say, it was not well received by the skating world in America, so he was forced to take his talents to the Old World.

His new “international style” did eventually catch on around the globe, and Haines is now hailed as the father of modern figure skating. He also invented the sit spin, a technical element now required in almost every level and discipline of the sport.

5. LADIES LAST.

In 1902, competitive figure skating was a gentlemen's pursuit. Ladies simply didn't compete by themselves on the world stage (though they did compete in pairs events). But a British skater named Madge Syers flouted that standard, entering the World Figure Skating Championships in 1902. She ruffled a lot of feathers, but was ultimately allowed to compete and beat the pants off every man save one, earning the silver medal.

Her actions sparked a controversy that spurred the International Skating Union to create a separate competitive world event for women in 1906. Madge went on to win that twice, and became Olympic champion at the 1908 summer games [PDF] in London—the first “winter” Olympics weren't held until 1924 in France, several years after Madge died in 1917.

6. AGENT OF STYLE, PART 2.

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Norwegian skater Sonja Henie was the darling of the figure skating world in the first half of the 20th century. The flirtatious blonde was a three-time Olympic champion, a movie star, and the role model of countless aspiring skaters. She brought sexy back to skating—or rather, introduced it. She was the first skater to wear scandalously short skirts and white skates. Prior to her bold fashion choices, ladies wore black skates and long, conservative skirts. During WWII, a fabric shortage hiked up the skirts even further than Henie's typical length, and the ladies of figure skating have never looked back.

7. TOO SEXY FOR HER SKATES.

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A buxom young beauty from the former Democratic German Republic dominated ladies figure skating in the mid- to late 1980s. A two-time Olympic champion, and one of the most decorated female skaters in history, Katarina Witt was just too sexy for her shirt—she tended to wear scandalously revealing costumes (one of which resulted in a wardrobe malfunction during a show), and was criticized for attempting to flirt with the judges to earn higher scores.

The ISU put the kibosh on the controversial outfits soon afterward, inserting a rule that all competitive female skaters “must not give the effect of excessive nudity inappropriate for an athletic sport.” The outrage forced Witt to add some fabric to her competitive outfits in the late '80s. But 10 years later she took it all off, posing naked for a 1998 issue of Playboy.

8. MORE COSTUME CONTROVERSY.

For the 2010 competitive year, the ISU's annual theme for the original dance segment (since defunct and replaced by the “short dance”) was “country/folk.” That meant competitors had to create a routine that explored some aspect of it, in both music and costume as well as in maneuvers. The top Russian pair chose to emulate Aboriginal tribal dancing in their program, decked in full bodysuits adorned with their interpretation of Aboriginal body paint (and a loincloth).

Their debut performance at the European Championships drew heavy criticism from Aboriginal groups in both Australia and Canada, who were greatly offended by the inaccuracy of the costumes and the routine. The Russian pair, Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, were quick to dial down the costumes and dial up the accuracy in time for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but the judges were not impressed. They ended up with the bronze, ending decades of Russian dominance in the discipline. (With the glaring exception of 2002, of course.)

9. IN MEMORIAM.

While not a scandal, this event bears mentioning because it has rocked the figure skating world arguably more than anything else. In February of 1961, the American figure skating team boarded a flight to Belgium from New York, en route to the World Championships in Prague. The plane went down mysteriously (cause still questioned today) as it tried to land in Brussels, killing all 72 passengers. America's top skaters and coaches had been aboard, including nine-time U.S. Champion and Olympic bronze medalist-turned-coach Maribel Vinson-Owen and her daughter Laurence Owen, a 16-year-old who had been heavily favored to win the ladies event that year.

The ISU canceled the competition upon the news of the crash and the United States lost its long-held dominance in the sport for almost a decade. The United States Figure Skating Association (USFS) soon after established a memorial fund that helped support the skating careers of competitors in need of financial assistance, including future Olympic champions like Scott Hamilton and Peggy Fleming.

Some celebrants call it the Spring Festival, a stretch of time that signals the progression of the lunisolar Chinese calendar; others know it as the Chinese New Year. For a 15-day period beginning February 16, China will welcome the Year of the Dog, one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac table.

Sound unfamiliar? No need to worry: Check out 10 facts about how one-sixth of the world's total population rings in the new year.

1. THE HOLIDAY WAS ORIGINALLY MEANT TO SCARE OFF A MONSTER.

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As legend would have it, many of the trademarks of the Chinese New Year are rooted in an ancient fear of Nian, a ferocious monster who would wait until the first day of the year to terrorize villagers. Acting on the advice of a wise old sage, the townspeople used loud noises from drums, fireworks, and the color red to scare him off—all remain components of the celebration today.

2. A LOT OF FAMILIES USE IT AS MOTIVATION TO CLEAN THE HOUSE.

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While the methods of honoring the Chinese New Year have varied over the years, it originally began as an opportunity for households to cleanse their quarters of "huiqi," or the breaths of those that lingered in the area. Families performed meticulous cleaning rituals to honor deities that they believed would pay them visits. The holiday is still used as a time to get cleaning supplies out, although the work is supposed to be done before it officially begins.

3. IT WILL PROMPT BILLIONS OF TRIPS.

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Because the Chinese New Year places emphasis on family ties, hundreds of millions of people will use the Lunar period to make the trip home. Accounting for cars, trains, planes, and other methods of transport, the holiday is estimated to prompt nearly three billion trips over the 15-day timeframe.

4. IT INVOLVES A LOT OF SUPERSTITIONS.

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While not all revelers subscribe to embedded beliefs about what not to do during the Chinese New Year, others try their best to observe some very particular prohibitions. Visiting a hospital or taking medicine is believed to invite ill health; lending or borrowing money will promote debt; crying children can bring about bad luck.

5. SOME PEOPLE RENT BOYFRIENDS OR GIRLFRIENDS TO SOOTHE PARENTS.

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In China, it's sometimes frowned upon to remain single as you enter your thirties. When singles return home to visit their parents, some will opt to hire a person to pose as their significant other in order to make it appear like they're in a relationship and avoid parental scolding. Rent-a-boyfriends or girlfriends can get an average of $145 a day.

6. RED ENVELOPES ARE EVERYWHERE.

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An often-observed tradition during Spring Festival is to give gifts of red envelopes containing money. (The color red symbolizes energy and fortune.) New bills are expected; old, wrinkled cash is a sign of laziness. People sometimes walk around with cash-stuffed envelopes in case they run into someone they need to give a gift to. If someone offers you an envelope, it's best to accept it with both hands and open it in private.

7. IT CAN CREATE RECORD LEVELS OF SMOG.

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Fireworks are a staple of Spring Festival in China, but there's more danger associated with the tradition than explosive mishaps. Cities like Beijing can experience a 15-fold increase in particulate pollution. In 2016, Shanghai banned the lighting of fireworks within the metropolitan area.

8. BLACK CLOTHES ARE A BAD OMEN.

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So are white clothes. In China, both black and white apparel is traditionally associated with mourning and are to be avoided during the Lunar month. The red, colorful clothes favored for the holiday symbolize good fortune.

9. IT LEADS TO PLANES BEING STUFFED FULL OF CHERRIES.

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Cherries are such a popular food during the Festival that suppliers need to go to extremes in order to meet demand—last year Singapore Airlines flew four chartered jets to Southeast and North Asian areas. More than 300 tons were being delivered in time for the festivities.

10. PANDA EXPRESS IS HOPING IT'LL CATCH ON IN THE STATES.

Although their Chinese food menu runs more along the lines of Americanized fare, the franchise Panda Express is still hoping the U.S. will get more involved in the festival. The chain is promoting the holiday in its locations by running ad spots and giving away a red envelope containing a gift: a coupon for free food. Aside from a boost in business, Panda Express hopes to raise awareness about the popular holiday in North America.